Hard read

Somewhere I got a paperback copy of “Crime and Punishment”. IIRC it was about 900 pages. I got to about page 800.
I was at my former business partners home one evening, and the conversation got to what we were reading. I mentioned I was reading C&P. My partner asked what is it about, and his wife tells him the whole story, including the end.
Totally ruined it for me.
I never looked at it again.
 
oldbrownhat said:
Many decades ago when I was in university I did an Italian Literature in Translation course which was The Divine Comedy. I still have my textbooks, the translations by Dorothy L. Sayers (except the last, which I think was completed by someone else after her death.) An extraordinary work. Dante pretty much "set" the Italian language, with the result that a modern Italian can read Dante with relatively little difficulty, compared to us trying to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which was written 80 years later.

We probably did parts of Paradise Lost in school but I don't remember much about it.

Now when you've cut your teeth on your current literature, take a deep breath and start chewing on some James Joyce (!)
Click to expand...
All in good time if I live long enough. ;)
 
I'm a bit of a Wizard of Oz fan, so my wife bought me the book Wicked. The author, Gregory Maguire, has a distinct writing style that was initially confusing. The more I read, the more attracted to the style I became. I ended up reading all his books.
 
I have a set of several John Ruskin books that I wanted so much to enjoy, and I persevered for a bit; alas, the 5-6 line sentences proved too much for me and I reverted to easier things.
 
I still have my copy of How To Talk Dirty and Influence People. Lenny was so whacked out he wandered a lot. I also have his LP, Lenny Bruce: an American. HILARIOUS!!!

Another strange book by another drugged out author, Cocaine Papers by Sigmund Freud. My copy was presented by Merck, Sharp & Dohme, 1975. E. Merck supplied Freud with his cocaine in 1884, and Coco-cola up until 1903.
 
There's a lot to be said for writers-and speakers-who get right to the point. November 19, 1863-the dedication of Gettysburg National Cemetery. The featured speaker was Edward Everett, one the great orators of the day, Lincoln was invited almost as an afterthought. Everett spoke for 2 hours, Lincoln for 2 minutes. The next day Everett sent Lincoln a note in which he said:
"I should flatter myself if I thought I came as near the central point of the occasion in 2 hours, as you did in 2 minutes."
 
Denverd0n said:
Haven't read any Milton as yet, but I have read a lot of other classics including a lot of non-fiction by the likes of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Frederic Bastiat, and others. Yes, these can take some effort to get through, but I find it worthwhile. I quite enjoyed The Divine Comedy, despite the effort involved in reading it.

I guess it's a question of what it means to "enjoy" reading something. Many of these books are not what I would call "fun" to read, not in the way that a Louis L'Amour novel is, but in the end I am glad that I have read them and so would say that I enjoyed the experience.
Click to expand...
I've read Milton, or at least about him: Jeff Milton, a good man with a gun by J. Evetts Haley - https://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Milton-Good-Man-Gun/dp/0806117567

Oddly he was a distant cousin of John Milton, I read him too (in the 7th or 8th grade), found it less interesting but we each have our own tastes.

Riposte
 
As an aside; have you ever seen a movie, liked it, and then read the book it was based on - only to discover little or no similarity? I can name a few candidates for best creative screenwriting taking significant liberties from the book.

Forrest Gump by Winston Groom. The book and the movie bear almost no resemblance to one another. And apparently Groom did not care for the movie.

Several of the 007 novels by Ian Fleming. Sounds trite but most of his novels are better than the movies with considerably more insight into the mind-set of the espionage game. Fleming is both artful and easy to read.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. Love the movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy but the original novel is a bit different and has "main" characters either not mentioned or glossed over in the movie. I know, time constraints.

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Watched the movie dozens of times. Finally read the book and actually understood what was going on.

Point is if you like a movie give the book a try. It may be quite different and it just may be lots better.

P.S. Don't think they've been mentioned but it's hard to imagine forum members not loving the Stephen Hunter series on Bob Lee Swagger. All 12 of them are quite good with the first several being absolutely riveting. Novels for gun guys, and all of them better than the resulting movies no matter how much you like watching them (and I do).

Bryan
 
Tried reading the Manhattan White Pages once. Incredible cast of characters but no plot.
Margaret Mitchell felt they prettied up Gone with the Wind too much, turned it into a "gentle Confederate novel" of the "moonlight and magnolias " genre. James Jones said they did the same to From Here to Eternity. To get the Army's cooperation to film at Schofield Barracks for the 1953 movie the profanity had to eliminated, Jones' homosexual allusions are also eliminated, in the book the Donna Reed character-Lorene- is a prostitute, in the movie she's a hostess in a private social club.
I found The Gulag Archipelago a terrific read, though having studied Russian and read so much on the Stalinist Era many of the terms and allusions and references are familiar to me. I remember Solzhenitsyn's description of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, and his admonition to the reader:
"So each time your ride on the canal in a motorboat-think of those who lie on its bottom."
 
Last edited:
We were condemned to read Moby Dick and Last..Mohicans. Awful! Thank God for Cliff's notes. We had to pick a book to read and do a report for any real book. I chose Dracula, Bram Stoker I believe. It was the worst book I ever tried to read. I payed a friend to do the report for me. Money well spent.
 
In the case of From Here to Eternity I have to say I'll take the film anytime over the novel.

My advice to all authors is - make it shorter. I don't have time to read any book more than an inch thick.

The wife did read Atlas Shrugged and some of the long-winded Russian novelists but I never did.

Just give me a crime novel by Elmore Leonard, where half the content is dialogue that sounds like it might actually have been spoken and I'm happy these days.

Now in my youth I did read a lot. I recall clearly my first visit to the elementary school library thinking, "Wow, all I have to do is read all the books here and I'll know everything!"

Alas, the libraries kept getting bigger and I fell ever farther behind.

What's interesting to me in my senior years is remembering all the books I read that in hindsight I realize did me more harm them good. For instance, anything by J.D. Salinger. The poor man was suffering from WWII PTSD and it showed in everything he wrote. As a youngster, Catcher in the Rye likely did more to screw up my generation than any other book.

But some of my favorite authors were and are: Hemingway, Orwell, J.P. Donleavy, Raymond Chandler, Churchill for his memoirs of WWII, Bruce Catton for his books on the Civil War - A Stillness at Appomattox I must have read 10 times. My father grew up at a wide place in the road called Spout Spring, just a few miles from where Lee and Grant called it quits. Our relations from out there, when they talked about "the war", were referring to the "late unpleasantness" between North and South, not WWII.

Now at 78 I have a mental list of all the books or authors I think I should have read but did not and likely never will. That damn library just keeps on getting bigger!
 
Thomas Pynchon is at writer admire, but sometimes have difficulty finishing. Gravity’s Rainbow is a brilliant book. I ate it up the first time through, but bogged down about a hundred pages in the next time I tried it. I started “V” five times, but only finished it three. Mason and Dixon and Against the Day I started but have not yet been able to finish.

John Fowles is another writer I have had trouble finishing. I have to be in the right mood.

These days I do not feel obligated to finish every book I start. Lots of times, I will get part way through a book and decide it is just not worth finishing. This is different from the books I bog down in, but feel some obligation or intent to get back to them and finish them, someday.
 
TXBryan said:
As an aside; have you ever seen a movie, liked it, and then read the book it was based on - only to discover little or no similarity? I can name a few candidates for best creative screenwriting taking significant liberties from the book.

Forrest Gump by Winston Groom. The book and the movie bear almost no resemblance to one another. And apparently Groom did not care for the movie.

Several of the 007 novels by Ian Fleming. Sounds trite but most of his novels are better than the movies with considerably more insight into the mind-set of the espionage game. Fleming is both artful and easy to read.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. Love the movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy but the original novel is a bit different and has "main" characters either not mentioned or glossed over in the movie. I know, time constraints.

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Watched the movie dozens of times. Finally read the book and actually understood what was going on.

Point is if you like a movie give the book a try. It may be quite different and it just may be lots better.

P.S. Don't think they've been mentioned but it's hard to imagine forum members not loving the Stephen Hunter series on Bob Lee Swagger. All 12 of them are quite good with the first several being absolutely riveting. Novels for gun guys, and all of them better than the resulting movies no matter how much you like watching them (and I do).

Bryan
Click to expand...
Hunter needs to go back in time and do some more Earl Swagger books.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

RM Vivas
The value of gun books
2
Replies
20
Views
1K
rockquarry
R
ddeanjohnson
  • Locked
WITHDRAWN --WTS- GUN BOOKS -- MAKE AN OFFER
2 3
Replies
45
Views
9K
ddeanjohnson
ddeanjohnson
NFrameFred
Musings on human animals and eccentricities
Replies
6
Views
500
Old 44 Guy
O
B
Introduction-LONG post warning
2 3
Replies
41
Views
2K
rwsmith
rwsmith
Echo40
Halloween CCW Thread — What's Your Undead Defense Loadout?
2
Replies
22
Views
2K
ditrina
ditrina

Latest posts

Back
Top